Event Description

Leslie Evans is the former publications and Website Manager for UCLA's International Institute, where he served as reporter on major addresses by visiting dignitaries such as Mikhail Gorbachev, Iranian Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, Egyptian human rights activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Israeli Pres. Shimon Perez, and Al Jazeera founder Omar Al-Issawi.

Evans also spent time working for the World Bank, World Health Org. and on Minnesota’s Mesabi Iron Range-- one year in an electric motor repair shop and two years on a labor crew in the iron mines as a member of the Steelworkers Union. His extensive history of writing, editing, and activism (sit-ins, teach-ins, marches, and arrest) has led to collaborations and friendships with key figures, among them black nationalist Ron Karenga and Peng Shuzhi, a founder of the Chinese Communist Party who once outranked Mao Zedong.

He is the author of Outsider's Reverie, a memoir; and two books of essays: Shaggy Man's Ramblings and More from the Shaggy Man. Topics range from Islamic jihad to Edwardian authors, American politics, and global resource depletion, especially of oil. All are available in both paper and Kindle editions from Amazon. Evans and his wife Jennifer Charnofsky live in West Adams, where he is president of the Van Buren Place block club.